Lacevember 2006

I've joined Lacevember 2006, a new KAL, and I've spent most of my knitting time the last two evenings trying to get going with my project. Back at Stitches West this spring, I bought several beautiful shawl patterns from Hand Jive Knits, and when I started looking for a lace pattern, the Dayflower Lace Shawl jumped right out. I have a lot of Elann's Baby Silk and I've been wanting to use some of it, in particular the lovely Cedar green, so since the pattern calls for a fingering weight yarn, the match was made. I thought.

I have a simple lace scarf going with a single strand of Elann's Baby Cashmere, so I thought I could make a go of the Baby Silk, although it is more slithery because of the silk content. OK, so I cast on for two repeats of the pattern and started my swatch. Hah! Couldn't get to row 5 without losing stitches somewhere. Frog. Repeat. Grabbed some DK Optimum and sailed right through the first set of the pattern rows. Back to Baby Silk. Frog. Repeat. Grr. Eventually I tried the Baby Silk doubled, and again sailed right through the design. This is a pattern with varying stitch counts from row to row, so I figured that was part of the problem I was having. But after considerable mental and audible grumbling and cursing, I accepted the message I was getting about this project.

So Dayflower will be a double-stranded project, still in the lovely Cedar Baby Silk. I've included pictures of the pathetic results of my two evenings' knitting, though there's actually 11 repeats done on the Edging. There's a picture of the pattern swatch and the Edging (bottom), which is the start of this shawl, and closeups of both. These are dry-'blocked', just pinned out to show the design. Obviously, my gauge is significantly different, though I am using the size 10US needles called for, and I'll be doing some math to adjust for the number of repeats across the width. I thought about using 11US needles, but they are just too big for this long a project, at least IMO; they felt like telephone poles! I can't give you a link to the pattern, since Hand Jive Knits is no longer selling directly from its website.

On other knitting progress, my holiday gift scarf #3 is moving right along, and I'll post pictures of it when there's a bit more of the pattern to show. I'm nearing the end of the boring 4x4 ribbing section, so more cables are not far off.

I have had a lot of comments about the pricing of the boutique items my seniors' charity group sells. We don't have a Queen Bee in the group, but we do have a Tradition, and Tradition is being difficult about adapting. Hence the ultra-low pricing. Until about 4 years ago, the boutique funds were used to buy yarn and quilt supplies when the donations of yarn and fabric ran low. Since I joined, other than some quilt batting, we haven't needed to buy anything. So we are s-l-o-w-l-y moving Tradition along toward raising more funds from our work to donate to other charities.